Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his
is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing
else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. The antithesis
of pantheism and personalism resolves itself into the question:
Is the nature of man transcendental or immanent, supranaturalistic
or naturalistic? The speculations and controversies concerning the
personality or impersonality of God are therefore fruitless, idle,
uncritical, and odious; for the speculatists, especially those who
maintain the personality, do not call the thing by the right name;
they put the light under a bushel. While they in truth speculate only
concerning themselves, only in the interest of their own instinct of
self-preservation; they yet will not allow that they are splitting
their brains only about themselves; they speculate under the delusion
that they are searching out the mysteries of another being. Pantheism
identifies man with Nature, whether with its visible appearance, or its
abstract essence. Personalism isolates, separates, him from Nature;
converts him from a part into the whole, into an absolute essence by
himself. This is the distinction. If, therefore, you would be clear
on these subjects, exchange your mystical, perverted anthropology,
which you call theology, for real anthropology, and speculate in
the light of consciousness and Nature concerning the difference
or identity of the human essence with the essence of Nature. You
yourselves admit that the essence of the pantheistical God is nothing
but the essence of Nature. Why, then, will you only see the mote in
the eyes of your opponents, and not observe the very obvious beam
in your own eyes? why make yourselves an exception to a universally
valid law? Admit that your personal God is nothing else than your own
personal nature, that while you believe in and construct your supra-
and extra-natural God, you believe in and construct nothing else than
the supra- and extra-naturalism of your own self.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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